China click fraud

There's an interesting piece from BusinessWeek that I just noticed that explains how click fraud in China is exacerbated by the big web sites using agents to sell online advertising for them. Many of the small advertisers apparently neither trust e-commerce sufficiently nor have the credit cards, etc. which would allow them to book online. So, a business has emerged with hundreds, if not thousands, of small commission agents onselling web-based advertising inventory.

Apparently Baidu is being sued by disgruntled advertisers who have also been protesting outside its offices about this.

The report also quotes an Analysys survey from earlier this year of 2,000 online advertisers which suggests that one-third of them believe they have been victims of click fraud.